Friday, 4 April 2014

CNN Student News is another great free listening resource on the web. It is a daily (Monday - Friday) news programme designed to be used by high schools in the United States but which provides great listening practice for students around the world. It is only 10 minutes long and usually has three or four current new stories in each programme. It is also a great way to follow current news events.

The best feature about CNN Student News for EFL students, however, is that unlike many other major news organisations, CNN Student News provides a complete transcript of each programme.

This is my advice on how best to use this resource. Rather than listen to the whole programme, choose one of the stories (which will probably last 2-3 minutes) and watch that a few times. Make notes on what you think 1) are the main points of the story 2) are some key words. Next, have a look at the transcript and check your notes. Next, watch the story again while reading the transcript. Finally, write down 5-10 new words from the story that you think will be useful to learn and make vocabulary flashcards for these words on Quizlet.

If you study like this once or twice a week for a year, I think that your understanding of news programmes in English will really begin to improve. Plus, you will learn lots of new, useful vocabulary.